


Excel-lence

by notalone91



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Book - Freeform, Domestic, F/M, Fluff, Milk, Technology, horse, quarterholstein
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 11:36:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3766672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalone91/pseuds/notalone91
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Horse, Milk, Book, Technology" was the prompt.  It's just a cute little puff of fluffy domesticity?  I don't know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Excel-lence

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the RSS exchange on tumblr back in 2012 for QuarterHolstein. The prompt was "Horse, Milk, Book, Technology" so, this is what I got out of that. This was the very first year of the exchange and VERY early in my writing, so. Take that for what it's worth.

After being locked inside the hospital for so any years, it’s no surprise that Belle has an undeniable ache.  She’s been so used to it that she figured the yearning she had now would be worse than any slight discomfort she’d have getting on again for the first time.

When she woke up that morning, she’d dressed comfortably; she didn’t want anything to be any harder than it had to be.  Still, she worried.  What if he hadn’t made it over?  What if he wouldn’t remember her?  So many questions swirled in her mind that she had to just go or she never would.

When she finally reached the stables, her breath stilled in her chest.  She ran her fingers down the list of names until she found the one she so desperately wanted to find: Philippe.

Philippe had made it over from her world and in his given species, no less.  She knew that that hadn’t been the case with everyone, like the poor mouse from Cinderella’s castle. Still, she walked eagerly towards the end of the stable and found hi, just as she’d left him.  When the horse saw her, he stuck his head out of the half opened door, clearly glad to see her as well. She draped her arms around the horse’s neck and smiled, glad to have her old friend back. 

As quick as she could she undid the ties and mounted her steed, not even bothering to saddle him and took off, out of the stable and down to the street.  She didn’t know much about life here in Storybrooke, but she did know that the four wheeled metal carriages frightened her.  Now that she had Philippe, she was much more confident in her ability to get around town.

The first thing she did was to go back to Rumplestiltskin’s house to show him who she’d found. 

When she got there, a troubling racket emanated from the tall windows and then, crash, something heavy came slamming through the planes and nearly sent Philippe running back for the stables.  She steadied him and tied the reins to the fence and went to investigate. 

A metal milk bottle?  How curious.  Why would this have come flying from within the house?  

“Rum?” she called out, moving cautiously to his study.

The racket in the back of the house stopped and Rumplestitskin emerged, looking unbothered. “Yes, dearie.  What can I help you with this morning?”  He leaned against the door jam and smiled, smoothing his hands along his thighs.

“I think it’s you who needs the help,” she cooed, striding toward him and placing her hands on his shoulders, trying to keep eye contact.  “What’s the matter?”

He shrugged her off and turned back to his study.  “Nothing’s the matter,” he laughed, not fooling her for a moment.  “Why would you ask?”

“Well,” she answered, shifting her weight and focusing on the tips of her shoes.  "I heard the shouting from a quarter mile away and it seems that you might have some objects trying to escape your grasp.”

“Is that so?”  He asked.  “What do you mean by that?”

Swinging the metal can from behind her, she merely said “This.”  She offered the container in his direction with a smile that dared him to evade the truth.

He let out a groan, heading back to his office and beckoning her to follow.  ”This is the problem,” he said dropping into the antique wooden office chair and covering his eyes, traces of exhaustion seeping in.  “All morning I’ve been trying to get this old piece of shite computer to open an excellence spread sheet and when it does,” he clicked the shortcut, for example, “the whole thing goes to pot.”  He lands a quick rap on the side of the monitor and exhales sharply, seeing something she’d clearly missed.

“Have you read over the manual?” she asked, leaning back gently against the desk.  The man simply groaned and avoided eye contact, making it obvious that, even if he’d kept the manual and, in the ordered mess of his office knew where it was, he’d certainly not looked at it in years.  “Okay, well… What do you mean by ‘goes to pot?’”

“This,” he moaned, shaking the mouse around and garnering no response on the monitor.  “It just stops working.”  He slammed the light piece of plastic down on the desk and flicked it away.  “I lose control of everything.”

Belle smiled warmly, running her hand down his back, tone bright.  “We wouldn’t want that now would we?”

Having realized how childish he must have sounded, he straightened back up.  “No.  No, we wouldn’t,” he said, the words shooting from his mouth in a crisp, matter-of-fact tone much more befitting of the man she’d come to love.

The girl smiled, shooing him out of the way.  She crouched down and focused on the screen and began her own work.  The tapping of the keys sent all sorts of alarms off in Rum’s head.  The pattern was erratic.  Clearly, she had no idea what she was doing and could only make the problem worse.  Still, he kept quiet, not wanting to let on how displeased he was.  After a few moments of trial and error, Belle had figured it out.  With a quick search of the hard drive and the modification of a file extension, everything was up and running.

The pawn-broker gaped open mouthed at the monitor as the columns formed under her hand as though by magic.  From where she was crouched, Belle leaned up and kissed him on the cheek before turning abruptly to go back out and return Philippe to the stable.  She’d almost have sworn she heard him muttering under his breath about being tempted to going back to doing the work in notebooks.  She merely rolled her eyes.  He really wasn’t one for change, was he?  Moreover, he certainly wasn’t one to be shown up.

—

Later that night, after he’d finished everything that needed to be done, Mr. Gold climbed the stairs and was greeted by a beautiful sight.  He pushed the sleeves of his fresh linen shirt to his elbows, ready to be rid of the confines of the day and take it all in. 

It wasn’t that it was out of the ordinary; Belle could always be found curled up with a book and a cup of tea on the couch in his study.  Tonight, though, there was something different.  He leaned in the door frame silently, watching as she pulled his old sweater down around her knees, winding even tighter into herself.  Her brow was furrowed in concentration and her hand scribbled away at the margins.  She wasn’t lost in a foreign world as she was with fiction.  She wasn’t wrapped in a biography.  His curiosity was getting the better of him and he just had to know what had her so riveted that she’d been unable to notice his being there.

He got a glimpse of the familiar yellow and black cover and had to turn away.  A ‘for dummies’ book. What could she possibly need or want with one of those.  There was nothing she couldn’t do from a real manual, let alone using her own intelligence and trial and error. 

And then, all at once, it hit him.  He turned back to see just what it was she was trying to learn in such a hurry.  ”Microsoft Excel” glared back at him from the glossy cover.  He smiled to himself, thankful to have a wife who didn’t rub her knowledge in his face, or the fact that he had the answers in front of his face the whole time, had he cared to look.

He’d have to remind himself to thank her for it when she came to bed after that night.


End file.
